The Grump, a beast that defies all description, but which would surely frighten any of the Muses or Graces, especially as she appears without prior warning. My belief that her being is caused externally, generally by the behaviours of People, other people, and needs, therefore very little prompting or prodding to appear. So much stupidity abounds! Those her words not mine, and to which I respond, in an attempt to calm her: Temper, Temper. Not that she takes much heed of them, just smirks, for she knows her tempers, though not altogether in many cases unjustified, are both cruel and absurd. In other words, they are not worth it – the subject of them nor the stress they produce. But grumbling, the Grump contends, is not all bad, not if, at the end of them, you see the funny side or they entertain another in your telling of them.
The Grump I think is not peculiar to women, but her appearance is, I hazard a guess being of that sex and therefore at her mercy, more frequent, particularly during The Change, her favourite moment, so she informs me, of a woman's life, since it can drag on for years, and therefore afford her plenty of opportunities to present herself.
The host may not even know or be sure she is undergoing The Change, but the frequent presence of the Grump is a sure sign, especially as she likes to cause reactions that are often out of proportion to the situation, particularly in women that previously hadn't had this affliction. Of course, they will, at first, find or invent other reasons for these unexplained rages, until the frequency of them increases or occurs only at a certain time and then the reason becomes all too clear. It is The Change.
And then other signs, perhaps gone unnoticed, become apparent. The skin, the hair. The flushes of heat. The fogginess. The joint achiness. The see-sawing emotions. Up, down, up, down, in a single day, just like the good old British weather. The Grump, if she has hands, rubs them with glee.
And perhaps the female she inhabits, before she's fully cognisant of the above, does, in some small way, too, for here is rage like she's never felt it, which can, I imagine, feel, if usually milder mannered, empowering. Here is the assertiveness she's been lacking! But rage of this nature, though it might at moments feel good, isn't always so easy to direct or suppress. The teeth will grind, the eyes will cold-stare or narrow, the voice will be clipped, sometimes accompanied by pursed lips or a strained upturning of the mouth, and the walk stomped. Stereotypical, you might think; yes, but nonetheless true, and the female all too aware, often laughingly so, how she is presenting. The comedy naturally realised in the aftermath, for at the time the Grump is all consuming.
There's a lot for the Grump to be angry about, some of it not so trivial, such as why is it, generally speaking, that a man is the saviour of women? By which the Grump means why are there so few women specialising in women's healthcare? Men might be sympathetic to female issues, but how much understanding can they have of them? They won't go through The Change. And they aren't governed as much by hormone fluctuations at any stage of life. But then all General Practitioners, including those identifying as female, don't seem to recognise the many varied menopausal symptoms, and refuse to consider The Change as a possibility. The patient is told they're too young or it can't be that, it must be something else. Are women, the Grump shouts, not allowed to know their own bodies? And how those bodies usually respond? Is the problem, asks the female, that every women's experience is individual, or that there's so little professional training?
Women, when afflicted by the Grump, demand answers; when not they just want reassurance and the right diagnosis.
Picture credit: Pelvis II, Georgia O'Keefe, 1944 (source: WikiArt).
Written May 2021.
